WNBA FINALS: DREAM VS. VALKYRIES

October 17, 2026

Cathy Engelbert

Commissioner Press Conference

CATHY ENGELBERT: I want to say good morning or good afternoon. Welcome to San Francisco for Game 1 of the 2026 WNBA Finals and the final chapter of our historic 30th season.

I can't wait to get this series tipped off and eventually crown a first-time WNBA champion and the eighth different champion in the last 11 seasons.

It's great to be back here, where the Golden State Valkyries have built something truly special in just two seasons. I was here last week for Game 2 of the Semifinals, and I have to say, the environment was electric. So I can only imagine what today is going to be like.

To be hosting a WNBA Finals in just your second season is remarkable. I want to congratulate the entire Valkyries organization.

Of course, the Atlanta Dream have been an incredible story of their own. Went to the WNBA Finals in their third season back in 2010 and again in 2011 and 2013. The Dream enter the series a perfect 5-0 in the playoffs, riding a franchise record 10-game winning streak. They are playing, as you see, with an unmistakable level of confidence, intensity and determination.

They say defense wins championships, and if that's true, we are in for quite a series. Six of the 10 players who earned WNBA All-Defensive Team honors this season will take the floor today, which tells you everything about the caliber of competition we're about to witness.

So, again, congratulations to both organizations, players, coaches, staff, ownership groups, fans, on reaching this stage. I know this building will be loud. But I can't wait to see these two teams compete.

Before I reflect on the season, I want to provide a quick update on the centralized WNBA Replay Center that we announced at All-Star to be up and running for the 2027 season. We recently completed a multimillion-dollar renovation of the Replay Center in Secaucus, New Jersey, in partnership with the NBA, and we remain on track to have it fully operational for the 2027 season.

Work is now underway to upgrade the necessary technology and video infrastructure across our arenas and build and train the team that will operate the center on a daily basis.

As I said at All-Star, this represents one of the largest investments we've ever made in basketball operations. I really believe the Replay Center will give our officials access to state-of-the-art technology and the best available camera angles, helping us bring greater consistency, efficiency and accuracy to our officiating process.

And that brings me to season 30. We entered this year believing the WNBA had never been in a stronger position, having just signed a new CBA, entered into new broadcast partnerships and experienced an offseason filled with exciting roster moves.

Looking back now, this has been the most successful season in the history of our league by many metrics. In the first year of our new media agreements, we reached more than 90 million unique viewers. That was just a U.S. number, by the way. It doesn't include Canada and outside the U.S. Fans watched more than 320 million hours of basketball, both all-time records. Over 90 and 320. We had 51 telecasts average at least 1 million viewers, compared with just 19 last season, and virtually every one of our media partners also celebrated record audiences or historic milestones of their own.

I couldn't be more grateful for all of our media partners and the way they made this season special. And I'm thrilled that NBC, Peacock and USA Network are bringing this Finals to fans across the country.

The story was just as remarkable inside of our arenas. Nearly 3.8 million fans attended games, again, regular season, the most in league history. We averaged a record 11,500 fans per game and almost two-thirds of our regular-season games were sellouts.

We saw continued growth across the board in merchandise sales, welcomed new and expanded corporate partnerships, and witnessed extraordinary investments from ownership groups across the league.

Our social and digital platforms also experienced tremendous engagement, generating more than 4 billion views, up 28 percent from last season. Never thought I would be standing up here talking in billions for the W, but we're there.

Most importantly, the basketball itself was spectacular. Offenses set league records for scoring, assists, field goal percentage, three-pointers, pace and offensive rating while delivering historic individual performance night after night. The best players in the world delivered the best basketball we've ever seen and fans responded in record numbers.

I also want to take a moment to recognize our two new franchises, the Portland Fire and Toronto Tempo. We knew these two markets have had tremendous passion for women's basketball, but the way these communities embraced their teams in their inaugural seasons was truly special. Both organizations have done an extraordinary job building identities that are authentic to their city, creating meaningful connections with their communities and establishing themselves as an important part of the WNBA family.

To see the excitement in Portland for the Fire and all across Canada for the Tempo has been one of my favorite highlights for this season. A startup is hard, and these were startups. I'm impressed with what these organizations accomplished in year one, and I know their best days are still ahead.

I believe the same is true for the rest of our league. The Cleveland Sirens, Detroit and Philadelphia expansion teams are on the horizon through the end of the decade. Dallas and Atlanta will move their home games into larger arenas next year to meet growing demand. Houston will welcome the WNBA back to a city with a rich basketball legacy. We are seeing a remarkable new generation of talent enter this league, joining an already incredible collection of stars who continue to elevate the WNBA.

So when I say that the future of the WNBA has never been brighter, I say it from a place of enormous confidence in what has been built.

I want to close with something personal. I grew up just outside of Philadelphia as one of eight kids with five brothers in a family where sports were simply part of who we were. My dad was a basketball player and is a Big 5 Hall of Famer at Saint Joe's University under Dr. Jack Ramsay. I played basketball and lacrosse in college. Sports kind of brought our family together. Some of my fondest memories growing up were centered around basketball.

Long before I ever entered the business world, sports taught me some of the lessons that have guided me throughout my life: how to be part of something bigger than yourself, how to get back up when things don't go your way, and how much people can accomplish when they come together around something they believe in.

I certainly never set out to become the commissioner of the WNBA. When I accepted this role in 2019, after more than three decades at Deloitte, I thought it would be a brief final chapter in a long career in business. Instead, it became seven and a half of the most meaningful, demanding and rewarding years of my life.

There was always another challenge to confront, another opportunity to pursue and another reason to believe even more deeply in what this league will become. What I will remember most is the people. The extraordinary players who inspired tens of millions every day. The legends and pioneers who helped build this league. The owners who believed and invested at a time when we had very little revenue, very little capital and very few people. The corporate and media partners who saw what this league could become, the fans who showed up year after year, and my incredible colleagues at the league office and across our teams who poured themselves into building the WNBA every single day.

So every milestone we celebrate today belongs to all of them and to generations of people who believed in this league long before the rest of the world began paying attention.

I leave with enormous pride in what we accomplished together, profound gratitude for the opportunity to play a part in this league's story, and complete confidence that the WNBA's brightest days are still ahead.

Basketball has been part of my story for as long as I can remember. I could never have imagined where this game would take me or how much this league and the people in it would come to mean to me.

So with that, thank you. Thank you for all your coverage. And with that, I'm happy to take some questions.

Q. Could you speak to how the Valkyries have elevated the whole league, and not just with the way that they performed on the court but with the way they have built this franchise and what that means for the teams that are following them?

CATHY ENGELBERT: Great. Thank you for that question. It was one of the things, when I first joined the league, and I've told many of you this, that I said -- kind of scratched my head and said, given technology is driving so much of your economy, the tech center of the country is the Bay Area and Silicon Valley and we don't have a WNBA team here? So I knew this was going to be successful. But Joe Lacob and the ownership team and Jess (Smith) and the entire Warriors and now Valkyries organization have done such a great job and provided such a great playbook for how you do a startup in this league, and especially at a time of enormous hypergrowth. They were just able to hire great people. It's always about hiring great people who could really grow the community here, make it feel different than men's basketball here. Obviously, we are going to see that tonight.

Every time I come here, I'm amazed at what has been accomplished in a short period of time. You mentioned the on-the-court success, but the off-the-court success has been incredible. The community aspect of this and the vibe. I just feel so proud that Joe and the whole leadership team here were able to execute so quickly, because we had a lot. It was a lot to get up and running. We'll see it today, and I see it every time I come here. Saw it at the airport today, there's a big WNBA activation when I landed at the airport. Big Valkyries activation there. That's always a good sign that this community has really adopted and really rallied around this team.

Q. When you look at everything you have been able to accomplish with expansion and CBA, Commissioner's Cup, expansion of the playoffs, bringing in things that had not been in the league before, and I know you probably have also done projections of maybe 10, 20 years in the future. Can you share any thoughts you have about what that future looks like, and then maybe anything you will tell your successor about the things that you are anticipating for the league?

CATHY ENGELBERT: Yeah. I think, again, as I said, the future is bright. We've done so much around our digital, our social, growing our corporate partnership business. Hopefully that still continues to thrive. But one of the things that obviously we really are looking forward to is global, to continue the global.

This year, our minutes watched globally were up almost 200 percent on Amazon. So to the extent that we are already in 240 countries and territories, but what does that mean to be in them? That they are showing our games. So when Nike brought A’ja (Wilson) to Europe and Sabrina (Ionescu) to Asia and just turning those players into global superstars, I think is on the horizon from a growth perspective. And ultimately whatever the global games platform might look like in the future. I would say that's No. 1.

But continuing to invest in technology, too, around the game. We are doing that with the Replay Center, but there's a lot of other aspects of basketball technology that we'll pilot and we'll look at in the future. Those all require capital to invest in. So that's another area.

Again, there's still a lot of growth, I think, out there. I always say to my team, like the league, we have been in this hypergrowth for a few years now. The teams are all in hypergrowth. We want to get to sustained growth because that's how you build on that business for the long term.

Do we have projections out? Yes, not quite as far as 20 years, but we have long-term projections of where this league is going to go and what the strategy is to get it there.

On your advice --

Q. Something you might share about what you would say to the next commissioner.

CATHY ENGELBERT: Yeah, I would say that when I came in, the first question I had was, other than why don't we have a team in the Bay Area was, what's our strategy? We did a very simple three-tiered strategy, which was player first, stakeholder success and fan engagement, fan experience. Those are the things that I viewed that we really have to shore up.

I would say that strategy has worked. And now you do have to evaluate whether there's other aspects of that where we really need to broaden our platform. We have hired very specifically around those three pillars to make sure we are delivering on all these promises.

And again, the growth came. I would tell the next commissioner that we've got to continue that and get into a sustained growth period at the league office. Then the teams are still in hypergrowth, and support the teams in their growth objectives because teams have grown a lot. You just look at the revenues of teams when I came in until this year, it's just an incredible journey they have been on, too. We were a little bit ahead of it at the league, but they have caught up quickly.

Q. What input have you had on the search for the next commissioner and what are key qualities that you think the next commissioner should have?

CATHY ENGELBERT: We have hired a search firm. I think that has been disclosed. Excel, formerly Nolan Partners, but Excel. I've been working on my succession for about three and a half years, by the way. This is not something I just threw at the organization. A succession management process looks at people who could take over if I get hit by a bus, people who could take over ready now, two to five years, five-plus years. That's how you do succession. We have internal and external candidates. In my kind of matrix, I've been tracking and talking with my board about it, the Board of Governors, every November.

The good news is there's a lot of interest in the job, which I'm excited about. I think there's a lot of different characteristics I think we are all looking for. I've met with the search firm and getting updates periodically as they start to reach out to potential candidates. I had candidates that I submitted; a lot of us did. And a lot of people have called. The good news is there's people who really want to take on this role, which I think is great.

As you know, it's like a multidimensional role. You have to have very thick skin. So I'd say that's one characteristic you have to have. You have to have confidence that we can continue this growth trajectory and confidence in building relationships with players and agents and the Board of Governors, the owners and the stakeholders. So it is a multidimensional role.

I think when I took it over, I didn't realize how broad the platform could become and how we became such a growth stock, as one of our owners called it, which has been positive but came with some negative around the attention and vitriol that's unacceptable that our players get. Still working on that as we continue to figure out how to support the safety of our players, No. 1.

Those are kind of some of the things I think of, but there's a variety of stakeholders that will weigh in on the process.

Q. You mentioned that you guys will crown a new champion this year. What about the diffusion of talent around the league? You have your stalwart teams who are not here, New York and Minnesota and Las Vegas, and they were all labeled super teams at one point. But does the diffusion around the league really help growth?

CATHY ENGELBERT: I think expanding the number of teams, expanding the number of games, expanding the playoffs. Obviously, I think the free agency system that we just negotiated as part of this collective bargaining agreement has worked well so far, and I think will work well into the future.

That's what's driving, I think, a lot of the parity in the league. If you looked 1 through 8, there was a lot of parity in the league. Anybody could be sitting here. These two teams happen to be the 2 and 4 seeds. But anyone could be here.

And I do reflect on, just two years ago, everybody is like, super teams and they are going to dominate forever, and that obviously didn't happen. There is a lot of parity because of the free agency movement and new coaching staffs, new GMs came into the league and took a different look on how to build a team. Obviously, Dan Padover has been a great GM. Look at what he's built here to be in the Finals this year, and he was the GM of Vegas in the early days that then led to their kind of early years of championships.

I think it's a really good sign for the league. You look at both college and international -- I didn't mention when I was talking about global, how international our league has become. When I came in, 8 percent of our players were born outside of the United States, and now it's a little over 30. I think 10 of the 24 playing on this court today are international players. So I think that has helped, too, make the talent much broader.

It's interesting because I think when we originally started announcing expansion, people were like, oh, you're going to degradate the quality of the game. The quality of the game has only gotten better with the players and training and nutrition, their strength training, etc., and obviously their basketball skills are speaking for themselves.

So I'm really proud that we have been able to do it when some people thought it would degrade the quality of the game. I think we've had probably the highest-quality season, certainly offensively, and these two teams are great teams defensively that made it here.

Q. Michael listed a lot of the steps in the growth of the league. There were good times and also some challenging times. As you look back, what do you hope your legacy will be when you look back?

CATHY ENGELBERT: Kareem, you were one of my first interviews when I first took this job, when I came to Washington when I did my listening tour of all 12 markets at the time.

Look, legacies are for history books to write. I'm not writing it. I think we're presiding, this team of mine, which many are here, are presiding over a period of such super growth that I think we made decisions that really put the WNBA and women's basketball at the forefront under this strategy of player first and stakeholder success and fan experience. It's really about people and investment.

I'd say, the one thing I did, I think we had 12 people. And it's not even about the number. We're close to a hundred now. But it was the capabilities we built. That's what we did. You grow a business by hiring great people who have capabilities to take your weaknesses and turn them into strengths to drive business and drive growth.

We had no chief marketing officer when I joined. We had no chief growth officer when I joined. Those two leaders in our organization today have 30 or 40 people working for them now. There was zero back then.

It was really a great story of how you build a business that quite frankly when I came in was struggling financially, struggling with digital. We had no social, we had no digital, we had 25,000 outdated pages on WNBA.com. All that stuff has been transformed and we have such a strong team, including engineers and data analytics and data scientists and things like that. It's really about hiring those capabilities, I would say.

Again, someone else could write legacy and history books will write that, but I'm just proud of the team we built. And I think the teams -- so that was the league office number. The teams have actually built their staffs, too, which I think has been incredible because now the owners see the beauty in investing in a W team from a people perspective, a human capital perspective.

That's what I'm proud of the most.

Q. The success of the Valkyries has people in Sacramento thinking back to the Sacramento Monarchs. Do you think there's ever a future in the league as the league continues to grow for the Monarchs to come back to the W?

CATHY ENGELBERT: Yeah, certainly we opened up an expansion process a few years ago that led to first the Valkyries, then Portland and Toronto, and now Cleveland, Philly and Detroit.

That takes us to the end of the decade. But I can see if this league keeps growing like it has, I can see, certainly, room for additional teams, whether they would be in Sacramento or other places. If there's an interest there, certainly, I'm sure, the league will be entertaining that.

I think it's not until after 2030, of course, because as we see, bringing two teams in like we did this year and one team last year -- God, I can't believe the Valkyries are only in their second year -- it's a lot. It's a lot on everyone, the startup team and also the league.

I can see a future for that if there's interest. And as you know, valuations have gone up considerably since we first sold this team here in the Bay. So we'd have to also look at the valuation out that far as well.

Q. You touched on it a little bit earlier, but because the league is so different from when you took this job and you're the one living the day-to-day, what skill sets do you want to see in the next commissioner for this next stretch of time that will help the W succeed?

CATHY ENGELBERT: Yeah, good question. Again, I think it's a mix of -- you need, really, a multidimensional skill set, so I can't say there's one thing or two things or three things.

Obviously, you have a complex stakeholder group. We have you, the media. We have our corporate partners. We have our owners. We have our investors. We have the players. We have the PA (Players Association). We have our officials and an officials PA as well. It's a little more complex stakeholder group than when I took the job because the league was so small back then.

So somebody who can manage that complex stakeholders group, as well as obviously build relationships with players and agents. I think the agents have become so important because these players are getting agents back in college because of their NIL, so they have become a big part. And given the salaries, the million-dollar salaries now that we have and the average over $580,000 or so, given that, too, the agents have become more important.

And the players themselves and the people they surround themselves with, probably financial advisors and things like that. I think managing that whole stakeholder group, and running the trains at the league office, too, because we do have a lot of people now that report in to a structure that is working today. So hopefully the next commissioner will carry that forward with that very incredibly talented team.

Then the teams, too, you have to liaise with the teams and help the teams with their weaknesses, should they want that help from the team perspective. We were not doing a lot that five, six, seven years ago. Now we are helping teams start up. We are helping teams evolve. You see all the teams investing in practice facilities and things like that. Encouraging them further to keep investing in their infrastructure, so that we can then invest in our infrastructure, is going to be important for the next commissioner.

Q. I wanted to go back a little bit. You mentioned about your strategy about players being first. I'm curious if you have any regrets about the way that the relationships unfolded over the past several years with players, and then also managing the complexities that come with that with culture wars, fans, those sorts of things, curious if you could speak to your experience and learned lessons from that?

CATHY ENGELBERT: I think the reason when I came in our first pillar was player first is the players didn't trust the league. We didn't have charters. They had not great living arrangements and travel arrangements and all the stuff that led to first, the 2020 CBA and then, certainly, the 2026 CBA.

It's been a journey to get there because we were virtually insolvent when I took over. So you had to build a growth league first to have money to pay the players money.

Again, I talk with players all the time. I know the media likes to write about bad relationships and I know there are some players -- the one thing you learn when you get in these big jobs, like I ran a firm of 100,000 people, not everybody is going to like you or agree with your strategy perhaps. That's why you have a key team and advisors and you have people who know what they are doing to grow the league.

Again, we are constantly working on that. I think you just saw from the players who made the All-Star this year, the players who made kind of some of these end-of-season award teams and I have talked to many of them to let them know that they won, they are all so bullish on the future of the league.

I think in collective bargaining, yes, there was a lot of contentiousness. But again, if you talk to a lot of people who do collective bargaining negotiations, they are saying, Cathy, that means you've arrived as a league because if you didn't have that contentiousness, neither side would have felt like they won.

What we were trying to do is set this up so that the league could continue to grow but that we could pay the players significantly more both in pay and benefits. That's the balance we struck in, I know, the very long collective bargaining negotiation, which we are just not used to in women's sports. But I think now we are leading there, as far as the number of players who now can make this truly their craft as a WNBA professional basketball player.

So, yeah, there's always things to work on. But that stakeholder group I described, from the players to the owners to the media.

And just to address your comment on social media and the vitriol, again, to continue to condemn those that are using behind a keyboard to spew vitriol and hate and racism and misogyny at our players continues to be unacceptable.

We obviously have worked on kind of the cyber side of that. We've worked on the physical security side of that by putting more physical security around our players, in arenas, outside of arenas, as they travel and things like that, which, again, none of that existed a few years ago.

We have made those investments. I think the players see the difference in the player experience as well from that perspective.

All right, everybody, enjoy the WNBA Finals.